JAN 30 2022 | Genesis: Behind the Curtain S1E2 | Abraham

Sea Change Church · Genesis: Behind the Curtain · "Abraham" Pastor Adam Stadtmiller · January 30, 2022
Genesis 27:30–38
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Joan Stevenson, and I've been asked to read the scripture today because I'm a small group leader. I lead a women's support group on Thursdays here at the church, and I think we have the distinction of being the only afternoon group. So if that would appeal to one of you ladies out here, you can find my phone number over with the small group listing and give me a call. Again, that's Thursdays, 1 to 3 in Fellowship Hall.

Today's scripture reading is from Genesis 17, 111. Heavenly Father, I pray that you will have the Holy Spirit speak through me, and I ask this in Jesus Christ's name. Amen. When Abraham was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty. Walk before me faithfully and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers. Abraham fell face down, and God said to him, As for me, this is my covenant with you.

You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram. Your name will be called Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful. I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you, for generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you, the whole land of Canaan, where you now reside as a foreigner.

I will give you as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you, and I will be their God. Then God said to Abraham, As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you, for generations to come. This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant that you are to keep. Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision, and that will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

The word of the Lord. Let's do it. All right. Good morning. We'll hold you Christian Fellowship on this incredible, beautiful Sunday here in the village. If you would turn in your Bibles to Genesis 17, 1 through 11, or you also have it on your notes as well. We are in the Genesis series again, and by the way, I was screaming at my daughter's basketball game, so if you hear that in there, it was an incredible game, and the varsity game was even better.

So you can put up with that. I think they adjusted my sound for that. But we are in the Genesis series looking at Abraham, and we're looking at the covenant, and the covenant that God made with Abraham. Basically, God comes to Abraham, and he makes him a deal. He says to Abraham, I want to bless you. I want to give you a promise, but there are some conditions that you have to fulfill, and if you fulfill the conditions, I will make good on my promise, and if you go all the way to the end of the story, I will give you eternal life.

It doesn't start out that way. It starts out in the Old Testament with property. It starts out with favor. It starts out with blessings. All the things God wants to give to us as people, but in the end, it ends up with the New Testament covenant with Jesus with eternal life, and we see that. Now, why would God make a deal? This is a great question. Why do we serve a God who makes deals with humans? Now, if you are a fan of gangster movies, and I'm sure we're also sanctified that none of us are, you will know who Don Corleone is.

Don Corleone, the greatest gangster of all time, and you know that Don Corleone has this phrase that he uses that is perhaps, as I was reading through the greatest phrases of all, you know, gangsters of all time in movies, this is rated, according to this one site on the web, that the greatest statement ever made. Now, if you know the story, Johnny Fontaine is the godson of, I'm not done quite yet, if anybody's timing me.

Quick poll. Johnny Fontaine is the godson, and he's basically the Frank Sinatra character in the movie, and Johnny Fontaine comes to him because he wants to get into one of Jack Waltz's movies. Jack Waltz is a producer in Hollywood, and Jack Waltz says, no, Johnny Fontaine, you can't have the part, and so Johnny Fontaine comes, and he's crying and whining to Don Corleone, and Don Corleone slaps him a little bit, which is awesome.

He says, grow up, act like a man, and starts smacking him in the face, and Johnny says, well, the movie starts in a week, I'm not going to get the part. And what does Don Corleone say? He says, I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. Now, that's pretty good, right? I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse. Now, here's the thing. God, in the place of Don Corleone, comes to Abraham in the place of Johnny Fontaine, and he says to Johnny, or to Abraham, I'm going to make you an offer that you can refuse.

I'm going to make you an offer that you might, that you can refuse if you choose, but I would suggest that you don't, if you want all the blessing of the promise. Now, we're going to circle back. We're actually going to fast forward to chapter 17, and then we're going to circle back to covenant, because I had a lot of questions last week about covenant. People understanding, okay, what's the difference between a promise?

What's the difference with the covenant? And then also, why does God seal it with flesh? What is all that about? So a lot of questions that came out of the studies, three or four questions, so I thought I'm going to circle back. And so if you notice, last week, he came to Abraham, and the first part of the covenant, that he was going to continually show to him. Remember, this ends up with the law, with Moses. God keeps progressively showing him what this covenant means, but he basically just says, if you go, I will do this.

So the first step of the covenant was, if you go. That's back in chapter 12. He said, I'm going to make a nation of you. There was a problem with that, because his wife was barren. But God says, I'm going to do this. Well, if you forward to chapter 17, in chapter 17, you actually get to the covenant that puts legal stipulations on God's promise. And so you have this promise that was fulfilled in a covenant. And so the covenant here is in chapter 17.

Let me get back to the scripture. Here with verse 1. When Abraham was 90 years old, that's old for a covenant, that you're going to become a nation. When Abraham was 90 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty. Walk before me faithfully and be blameless, and I will make a covenant between you and me and greatly increase your numbers. So in this, we see that God makes a promise. And we're going to talk about why would God make a promise?

Why did God even need to bind himself into a promise? Why would God bind himself into a covenant where he has some skin in the game? When he's God, he doesn't need to. And how does that work out towards eternal salvation? Where we're going today for you is that there is a new covenant today. It's not by the flesh. It's by the spirit. The covenant is within Jesus. It gives you eternal life, but it also gives you blessing.

And I want to say God is making an offer to believers who want to walk according to his law that he will increase blessing because God increases blessing when we do the things that are of his nature. It just makes sense. He cannot stop himself from blessing things that are within his nature. So the question to long-time believers is, do you want to obey the covenant of God, the covenant of the spirit, no longer circumcised by the flesh of the body, but circumcised by the heart, the flesh of your heart?

It is a covenant of the heart. Do you want that? And if you don't follow God, I would say that God is making you an offer. Do you want to be saved from your sins? We'll see that in John 2.25. It says the new covenant saves us from our sins. And so today we're going to look at that and we're going to end that. We're going to land this after we just look at covenant, just to explain it for a minute, we're going to end this and land this with talking about the blessings that come with following God and living within his covenants and within his commands.

And so if you have your scripture, if you have your notes, let's look at what a covenant was. Understanding biblical covenant. In a literal sense, a covenant means a binding agreement, a legal contract. It is a seal between two or more parties. Otherwise, the word covenant, the root word means to cut and that has to do with circumcision. But there actually is the giving of flesh. There is the giving of flesh that binds this contract together.

So there's three parts to the deal that God makes with us. The first part is this. God makes a promise. What is a promise? Why does a promise matter? Why do you need to make promises? Number two, that promise gets sealed in a legal covenant. God binds himself to a legal covenant. And thirdly, there is the giving of flesh through circumcision in the Old Testament, through Jesus' death on the cross in the New Testament.

Now, this understanding of giving of flesh to seal something, we'll talk about that in a moment, but it is actually in every culture, every continent, has this idea of a blood oath or a blood covenant. So we'll definitely look through that. But we see that here, that God is making a biblical covenant with two parties. Now, think about it in regard to marriage. In regard to marriage, what is the promise? I promise myself to you, will you marry me?

Yes, I will marry you. There is a promise. What happens at the wedding ceremony? You give vows. Those vows are legally binding, right? So those go to the state. I'm doing a wedding today, doing an Indian wedding today out at the Estancia. And afterwards, you have the wedding vows, and then they go to the state, and they take these vows, and they solemnify them into a covenant. That covenant is legally binding. And then afterwards, it says the two will become one flesh, and so you give your body.

I will say this, that the, why are you giving of your body? Why does that matter? Why do we, why does the deal not start with the flesh? Why does it end with the flesh? Because the only thing you actually own in this world is your flesh. Do you know that? You might think you own your car. You don't. You might think that you own your house, property, none of those things you actually own. The only thing that you actually own, the only thing that you actually have full control over, is actually your flesh, what you do with your body.

And so when it comes to sealing agreements with God, he actually goes to the only thing that you can actually offer, which is yourself. You see, God finishes all of his deals with himself. And because we live in a mortal world, that self is of the flesh, and that is why Jesus was crucified in the flesh. He finished the deal with that. So, a promise, a contract, given in flesh. Now if you look, there's a picture here, you're going to see, of a blood oath in Scandinavia.

Blood oaths, it's really interesting, if you look at, in Native American culture, they have blood brothers. The blood brothers would cut their hands, and you've probably seen this in movies, or if you've studied indigenous culture, they would cut their hands, and then they would put it together after they would make a deal, and they would hold together, and they would become blood brothers. They would seal the deal in flesh.

The same thing happened in African cultures. There was the giving of blood. In Scandinavia, in Scythia, they would actually put blood into a cup, and then they would drink it after a meal, I mean, excuse me, after the covenant was made. You could only have up to three blood brothers. Why would that be the case? Because they were afraid that there would be conflicting interest if there was more people than that. But it is interesting.

I find it incredibly interesting. When the scripture models every single culture, not every single culture, but the majority of continents, every continent that you see in the world, has had some type of oath like this. They see the importance, that the only thing that you can actually give is of yourself. So if we look at this promise, the first thing is this. Go to number one. God makes a promise to a subordinate. God binds himself to the promise, and then God seals that contract with flesh and blood.

Well, the first question is this. Why does God need to make a promise? The reason we make promises is because we live in an imperfect world that breaks its promises. The reason there is a promise is because you are giving trust. Now, faith is a form of trust. And you are offering something to someone in a promise, and you are asking them to trust you. If you go to Genesis, one of the things you'll see in Genesis with Adam and Eve is there was no promise in the beginning of, in the story, before the fall of man.

There was all blessing. Everything already existed. There wasn't a promise, if you don't eat from the tree of life, then I will make you fruitful. If you don't eat from the tree of life, then I will provide for you. No. He said, go and be fruitful. It was already understood that they would be fruitful. He didn't say, I would provide for you, because he didn't need to promise, because they were in a perfect world. All he said was, just don't do one thing.

But there was no condition to the giving of what they already had. There was no extra blessing, because they lived in fulfillment. So now, post-fall, we actually don't have those promises. The land was cursed, and man would have to work against the land. Women had a harder time bearing children. There was all these headwinds now. And so now, there was a need for a promise that you didn't need before. But God also understands free will, and so he also gives us the ability to say no if we don't want to accept the promise.

The next thing we do, we see is that God puts that promise into a covenant. covenant. And he does that, like I said, in a moment, because the world is fallen. Now, does God need to say, hey, I'm going to make a covenant with you, I'm going to send my son? He doesn't. He can actually promise upon himself. But he understands that because we live in a broken and fallen world, that he is going to step into the world that we live and play by our rules.

Do you understand that? You see, God, it says oftentimes, can swear by himself. He doesn't need to have a contract to make sure that he's going to keep his word. God keeps his word. But because we live in a fallen world that has promises that are broken, God says, I'm going to get some skin in the game and I'm going to actually get skin in the game with my flesh. But before we can start with the flesh, we have to start with this contract.

So God has a contract and it starts with Abraham and he begins to show it to Abraham as the covenant begins to unfold. And it unfolds, first of all, by him saying, go to this place, I will show you. And then he begins to tell him, I'm going to do this and then I'm going to do this. And 1,500 years later, Moses shows up and he actually solidifies that covenant in writing on stone that tells him how to live your lives.

Now, does God just want to give a bunch of rules? Why does God give rules? The reason God gives rules is so that he understands that when we live according to the rules, there is a blessing that is innate to that. We'll talk about that blessing here in the end. And I think it's still it is true for today for believers who want to follow God. Do you want blessing in your life? You can live antithetically to blessing or you can live in the stream of blessing according to if you want to live by the covenant.

But no longer we are a covenant of the law, no longer we are a covenant of rules, we are a covenant of the spirit that is totally free. So God binds himself to this contract. And then God seals the contract with flesh and blood. And I told you the only thing you actually own is your own flesh and blood. And so this is why in 1 Corinthians when it talks about when you sin with sexually, look at what it says in 1 Corinthians, you're going to understand now why it's different than other sins and why it's such a big deal for God.

In 1 Corinthians 6.18 it says this, flee, that means run. Doesn't mean hang out on the edges, doesn't mean figure it out a little bit from the side. Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins, all, circle all, all other sins a person commits are what? Outside of the body. But whoever sins sexually sins against their own body. Why is it, why is that? Because the only thing that you own is yourself. The only thing that you actually have control of is what you do with your body.

If you were to read Viktor Frankl who wrote about his stay in a concentration camp, he knew that the one thing that the Nazis could not control was what he thought and what he chose to do with his body. And so we understand that God understands that you have that thing and so this is why we crucify the flesh. When Christ calls people to come, he bids them to come and die. This is why God wants obedience more than sacrifices, is the word.

He doesn't need more stuff. He doesn't need you to go do more things. He doesn't need you to dance faster. He just wants you. And we need to understand that. Now, why would God go through all of this? Why does he just click his finger and say, well, you had some sin, I'm going to change it, I'm going to take away the sin? Because to do that would be going against God's own nature. Because God's just. God doesn't, you can't, God just can't let people off the hook.

God's just especially when letting them off the hook of is denying the eternal God himself. And so, because he loves us, because he wants to be in relationship with us, and because he has to live according to his character, which is a character of just and of love, he has to devise a plan, and the only way for that to happen is through a covenant. The only way for that to happen is through an agreement, an agreement that we can say no to, that actually, and in the end, he gives himself, that he comes as flesh into this world because he made this world, and he chooses to live according to the parameters often unless he's working in the supernatural of this world.

But he won't violate himself. He won't violate that covenant, so he makes a covenant. So, you won't understand Christianity. You won't understand Jesus. You won't understand why God does what he does unless you understand covenant. And so I did circle back on this today, so we fast forwarded to chapter 17, and now we're back in chapter 12 next week talking about how God moves on or how Abraham moves on, but you won't understand the Christian faith unless you understand this covenant.

And this covenant was enacted for one thing, John 2.25. John 2.25 says this, and this is what he promised us. This is not in your notes. John 2.25 says this, and this is what he promises. There's that promise language. This is what he promised us, eternal life. You see, the covenant starts with a promise. The covenant, because of a fallen world that where promises can be broken, is sealed with a contract. And then that contract is solidified with the giving of the flesh because it's the only thing that you can give.

And so God basically gives you himself. And so in the relationship of faith, we are giving ourselves to God completely, and he is giving himself to us. You see, God didn't come to Abraham and say, just be a really good shepherd. If you can just shepherd some sheep, oh man, if you'd be the best shepherd, we can just have this relationship or I'll do this for you and I'm just going to bless you and give you these things.

All those things are beside the point. The thing is, is God is saying, I want, you know what your inheritance is going to be? It isn't going to be the land of Israel anymore. It's going to be me. I want you to inherit me. You see, can you imagine getting that inheritance? Imagine if you got a phone call, someone has passed away and they've left you something and you go to the meeting with the lawyer and it's in a contract and it's in a trust, right, because we call it trust because covenant is based on trust, marriage is based on trust and they come and they say to you, well, actually it's God and he's met with you and he wants to give you himself.

Imagine that. That is actually what the scripture says, that God is giving you himself but he wants no less than for you to give yourself. So there is a mutuality, a poultice of all that you are and all that God is through a covenantal contract that blends together the best of you in God's image and all of God and God blends that together and we see this in his promise. Now I want to say just one thing quickly about this.

You can't back your way into the promise. Let me just say this. Once again, marriage is such an easy illustration because it's the primary illustration that God gave us to reflect the covenant. It's such an easy one so forgive me for using it multiple weeks in a row but it is why we believe about marriage what we believe. You can't start with the flesh and back your way into the covenant and back your way into the promise.

Why is that just in regard to the way God made humankind? Because the flesh is not eternal. eternal. You see, when God makes a promise it says, as in John 2.25, I promise you what? Eternality. A promise is eternal. I promise you forever. When you get married, I promise you forever. It is an eternal promise. The covenant that binds together the promise is eternal. It is an eternal covenant. He says, I made an eternal covenant with my people, with my people Israel.

I made an eternal covenant with you. But what about the flesh? Is it eternal? No. It will pass away. And so, what happens is the flesh is made holy. The flesh is made righteous. Why? Because of the promise, which is eternal. Because of the covenant, which is eternal. And the trust that comes with that, what we often try to do is, and this is called living according to the flesh. We start with the flesh. Why? Because the flesh is more, feels more real than the covenant.

And the flesh feels more real than the promise. I mean, does the promise feel good when you're in eighth grade and you ask Holly to go skate, couple skate with you at Aquarius? And I've talked about this. And she had one of those Hawaiian tie, half shirt things on. Yeah, she was going for it. I'm telling you what, you know, playing some Pac-Man. Holly comes by. And I ask her to go for that couple skate and we do one couple skate and then she goes to the bathroom and I've told you, her friend comes, skates over to me and says, Holly wants to break up.

I'd ask her to go with me. We went together for one skate. But the feeling of that promise, oh, how good was it that moment when she was in the bathroom hiding from me and I was playing Pac-Man in the moment. How good did that feel? Well, I say, if there's a feeling of promise and contract, the wedding is great, but why do people go for the flesh first? Because it feels even better. And it actually makes you feel alive and real, and it actually feels more alive because it's in the moment.

And so why? That's living according to the flesh. We want everything the flesh offers, but we don't want the covenant and we don't want the promise because it has limiting principles. And so it says, you can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this, but I will give you this. And so let me just say this, whether it be in business, whether it be in your relationships, whether it be living according to your stomach and the flesh, you can't back your way into God's promises.

You can't back your way into God's blessings because you can't start with something that is the flesh and expect the eternal results. You see what I'm saying? You can't start with the flesh and then expect to get all the blessing of the covenant and all the blessing of the promise for things of eternality because the things of the eternality do not mix, it's like oil and water with the things of the flesh. And so this is why we do things in the order that God has called it because in that there is trust, in that there is faith, and without trust there is no relationship.

You know, when you look at love, does love exist without trust? When you back it in from the flesh backwards into the promise, you actually don't have the trust because you've committed to nothing. Flesh, without the promise first and without the covenant first, is just meaningless. God understand, it has no meaning. It's just meaningless. And so if you look at what the world promotes today as these incredible relationships, what you also find oftentimes is just meaninglessness.

It has no meaning. And that's why sexuality and all these different things have no meaning anymore. If you ask people to define something, it has no meaning. Why? Because it has no covenant. It has no promise other than you can have what you want in the moment. I don't want that. I want something with some teeth. I want something that takes, it's hard to work for. I want something that matters. God said there's three things quickly as we finish that the blessing of the covenant gives you.

In chapter five, true identity, excuse me, verse five. No longer will you be called Abram. He changes his name here. Your name will be Abraham for I have made you a father of many nations. God has a name for you. It says in Revelation that there's a stone and then when you get to heaven, God's going to give you a stone. It's going to have your true name on it. And only you and God will know it. That's pretty cool. That's like this intimacy.

That's this trust. You tell God a secret, he's not going to go tell everybody. And just for instance, if you feel like God tells you something, sometimes God doesn't want you to share everything he tells you. It was funny, God used to tell me stuff and I'd just go, hey, God told me, God told me. And God's like, dude, that's my secret. Sometimes God tells you stuff and he doesn't want anyone else to know. Matter of fact, do you know there's nowhere in scripture that says the devil can read minds?

Sometimes if you start talking, you actually tell spiritual forces things that they wouldn't know otherwise. The Bible does not say, it says they can put thoughts in your head, but sometimes we just need to have an intimacy with God. Sometimes we need to have a closeness with God. There are secrets that no one knows that just between God. And so one of those secrets is your identity. He says, I will give you a new identity.

And so with that, he says, no longer you'll be called Abraham. God has a new identity for you. In a world that just seeking for identity that starts with the flesh, just, you know, everything's based on the identity of your flesh. What color you are, what you want to do with the different organs of your body, that's your identity. It's so far beyond that. Because our identity is based in something eternal, not in the flesh.

If you want to have an argument or a discussion with somebody to go against this idea that our entire identity is based on some, you know, immutable characteristic of our flesh that is passing away when we die, I wouldn't even start there. I would say, I don't start there. I start with the eternal identity that God has for you. He wants to give you a new identity that is based on something more than what you look like, that is based on something more than, you know, the color of your skin.

And he has, he's created you in a unique way and he wants you to become that person. And it's more than a name. It's more than a name. It's an identity of who he's having you become and the difference you will make in eternity. He wants to give you a true identity. You will no longer be called Abraham. And if you live according to God's covenant, and if you decide, I no longer am going to start with the flesh and back my way into the promise, which you can't do, but you're going to begin to look at God's promises, live according to his covenant, and only use the flesh when it is under the covenant blessing and the promise of blessing, you will have a new identity.

You will also have fruitfulness. He says in verse 6, I will make you very fruitful. I will make you a nation of you, and kings will come from you. I will make you very fruitful. Would you like to be fruitful? Psalm 1 fruitful, that you bear fruit in season, that your life is just fruitful. You have a conversation, and it's fruitful. You live in your neighborhood, and it's fruitful. It produces fruit. What is the fruit now?

Is it always a promise of a new land? No. But God says, it's the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience. That starts to abound in your life. But we do that when we live according to his covenant, because Jesus fulfilled, the covenant did not pass away. And so we live according to the covenant still, according to the rules, many of the rules of the covenant, but we no longer do it because we have to, out of compulsion, because Jesus fulfilled it.

We do it because we want to. So for the first time ever after Jesus died on the cross, a Jew no longer had to do, to tithe or give an offering because it was required. They did it because they loved God and they wanted to. And as a parent, isn't that what you want? Do you want a child who just does what you say so you won't, you know, put them in their room or punish them or be draconian in some way? Or do you want a child who just runs up to you and says, I love you.

I just want to spend time with you. I just, I love that when my children come up to me on a regular basis and they're like, hey, let's go hang out together. Let's, I just want to be with you. I just want to connect. True identity, fruitfulness, and the final one as we close, territorial dominion. The whole land of Canaan where you are now and reside as a foreigner, you're a foreigner. I will give you an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you and I will be their God.

It's interesting. There is this idea of taking dominion. And so it was different in the Old Testament. They actually went to war and they had, they took dominion that way. But there is a dominion of emotion that happens when you begin to love people. There is a dominion of authority in people's life when you begin to mentor people and they begin to look up to you. There is a dominion in a neighborhood. There is a dominion that is of the Spirit that God begins to increase your influence by the way in which you live.

So you might work at an organization that is anti-God, but God begins to open up conversations and doors. Why? Because he's expanding your dominion. Why? Because you're living in the promise, you're living in the covenant and he's blessing the decisions of the flesh. That's how it works. It doesn't work any other way. You can't start with the flesh and hope you can kind of back your way into the promise. It is impossible.

God wants to, he wants to bless you. He wants to love you. He wants to expand your dominion. He wants to make you fruitful. He wants to give you a true identity. But this only comes when we say, God, I want to give all of my flesh to you. I want to give all of my heart and all of my spirit to you. When we get to the New Testament, we're going to be looking more about the covenant that has been changed in Jesus, but we won't understand that covenant unless we understand what happened with Abraham.

Amen? Amen. Let's stand if you would. And God said to Abraham, whoever you bless, I will bless. And I will curse whoever I want to curse. So he says, there's no cursing for you, but you can do some blessing. I want to bless you today. And we're going to believe that God bless you. So one of the things you do here if you're brand new, if you extend your hands, I want to bless you today. Lord God, we want to pray, first of all, God, that you would speak your promises over this congregation.

Your promises of God, the biblical promises, Lord God, God, that you would speak your promises. And God, that they would desire to live in covenant and where they, God, they have let the flesh lead, that we become a church that does not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit, that has all the blessing of promise and covenant. We pray for their true identity to be known to them, that they begin to not walk in the anti-identity that the world tells you that is about body, image, and body, all this, Lord God, but God, we pray that we walk in an image as a child of God, that they would know that they were children of God, that they would have fruitfulness.

They would see fruitfulness in all the things that they do and in the places that are fallow or barren ground, that you would begin to bring water and rain of your spirit to begin to bring fruitfulness to their lands and that territorial dominion, God, give them authority and dominion and influence, God, open doors that no one can close and close doors that no one can open. We bless you now as you go out in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen. If you need prayer today, please come forward. If you want to know more about following Jesus or our church, go into the back. If you just want a coffee, go to the cafe. We love you. See you soon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.